


stand together in the eye of the storm

by eynn



Series: i can't go back and lose it all [23]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Found Family, Gen, Nobody Dies, Post-Order 66, and there is another cuddle pile afterwards, but things do not go as he thought they would, dad plo and mom shmi, qui-gon finally goes to talk to obi-wan, sith!jedi order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24334390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: Anakin feels a deep satisfaction as he kicks the wall in with the Force and it narrowly misses hitting Dooku. He was just beginning to believe that the asshole old man did genuinely want to join them, and now he goes and does this to Obi-Wan?Rex grabbed his hand again and he can feel the spike of attraction through their tiny newborn Force-bond, but he files that away to gloat about later and squares up for a fight, lightsaber poised to strike. Rex has his own saber in his other hand.Anakin could get used to this.He looks over his shoulder to see Cody protecting Obi-Wan and the rest of the men who followed them flowing into a tightly-packed formation in the corner of the room, centered around the two of them and fairly bristling with the intent to absolutely try their best to murder a ghost if he makes one wrong move towards them.
Relationships: CC-1004 | Gree/Luminara Unduli, CC-1010 | Fox/Sabé, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, Plo Koon/Shmi Skywalker
Series: i can't go back and lose it all [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658362
Comments: 106
Kudos: 941





	1. Chapter 1

Shaak Ti is having a peaceful session of planning exactly what she is going to do to the Kaminoans when the door to her small quarters slides open and Mace Windu slips inside, a faintly hunted expression on his face and something close to panic flickering in his eyes.

He gets maybe two steps into the room when he freezes.

“Sorry, I thought – I must have misread the number,” he says, and turns to leave.

Shaak narrows her eyes at him – the Force is practically screaming around him – and slams the door shut in his face. “Come talk to me,” she says, pushing herself over on the narrow bunk so there is room for him. She’s faintly proud, still, of being able to do that. It’s been too long since she could move herself on her own.

He drags his feet as he walks towards her and looks around for a chair. She sighs and gratuitously misuses the Force again to pull him closer until his knees bump into her bunk and he has no choice but to sit down.

She puts an arm over his shoulders and leans against him. “This is cozy,” she says mildly. “You’re one of the only ones who hasn’t been around to nap with me at some point.”

“I was busy,” he says, avoiding eye contact. He’s stiff under her arm. “Where is your usual escort?”

“I sent them off to have some fun,” she says. “I love them dearly, and they’ve been so good to me, but I’m doing much better and they need to have some time to themselves.”

It’s still a bit weird to not have at least one of her children in her room, but she knows that they are close and that keeps her calm when she looks up and doesn’t see them there.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“We’re on course for Kamino,” Mace says dispassionately. “Going over the battle plans. Yoda thinks that there must be a nexus there and he’s going to ask the Temple if it wants to put down roots there for a while.”

“On Kamino?” Shaak is surprised. She hadn’t actually considered staying on Kamino, but it does make a lot of sense. The Temple is big and semi-sentient enough to expand itself when needed, but it needs time and there are just so many of her children compared to how many Force-sensitives it has ever had at one time.

Putting the Temple in or near Tipoca City, depending on where the nexus is, would make all their lives easier. Perhaps some of them could even live outside the Temple, in a city they know they would be safe.

She doesn’t realize how long she’s been quiet, thinking it over, when Mace suddenly says “Jinn forced his way into to talk to Obi-Wan,” and then shuts his mouth so hard she can hear his teeth grinding together. It sounds painful.

Shaak absently rubs her thumb in circles on his shoulder like she does when her children are upset as she ponders this new and honestly rather upsetting but unsurprising information. “That’s . . . not the best.”

“It’s the absolute worst fucking timing the man’s ever had and he’s always been horrible at timing,” Mace says, throwing his hands in the air. “Obi-Wan’s got the worst case of Force exhaustion any of us have ever seen, including Master Che, he just put on his new arm and he’s being all weird about it, it still hurts him like hell when we do joint meditation to try to rebuild his shields which are in pieces from here to wild space. Skywalker’s using their old training bond to keep him sane right now but that can’t last forever. Considering that Jinn has to be making psychic contact with us to even have us able to hear him much less see him, I can’t imagine that any of it is going well.”

“Is anyone there with him?” Shaak asks, feeling worried. She wonders if she should have Mace help her up and go intervene herself.

Mace stops waving his hands about wildly and buries his face in them. “Kriffing Dooku,” he says wearily. “I don’t know how, but somehow he managed to bypass whatever fuckery Jinn figured out to get around us and then keep us from entering his room. I don’t think Dooku’s going to actively hurt Obi-Wan, but it’s still . . .” He is forced to stop when his breath catches on a sudden sob.

Shaak has only a moment to blink in surprise before her arms are full of crying fellow Sith. She is quite practiced at soothing people through breakdowns at this point and at takes it in stride. She’s mildly surprised that Mace hasn’t had one before, if she’s being totally honest.

And she’s touched that he came to her, and feels safe enough in her company to let his barriers down.

“—been nothing but a failure, who in their right mind thought I’d be a good choice to lead this group of idiots, I didn’t even see Sidious right under our noses –”

“None of that,” Shaak says mildly, poking his forehead with a claw. “We all failed on that front, and we took responsibility and made it better. You’ve been doing your best to look after us and you’ve done wonderfully.”

~

Cody’s doing some training in the gym, sparring with Rex and Gree with their lightsabers, when he feels the first ripples of surprise and then pain wash along his bond with Obi-Wan. He ignores them at first; he’s spent days jumping at every little tremor to find out that they were just Obi-Wan being startled by something flying past his window or the shielding bond with Anakin faltering a little when he is focused intently on something else.

The ripples build as he dodges Gree’s wickedly fast and precise strikes – he thinks that Luminara was teaching her long before they ever built their own sabers, she’s too good at this – and when the wave of overwhelming sorrow and self-hatred and a sharp pain like a broken bone comes, he has just enough time to back away and signal he’s out of the match before dropping his lightsaber and falling to his knees.

He’s vaguely aware of Gree catching his saber before it can burn the mats and Rex tripping over his own feet as he runs to catch him, but his vision is strobing and blurring and his head feels like someone has taken an axe to it.

“Is it Obi-Wan?” Rex asks, and Cody nods and then regrets it.

He feels his brothers pressing close around his mind, lending him their own shields and strength, and the disorientation recedes enough for him to sit up. He tries to pass some of the comfort and safety of the crowd along to his Obi-Wan.

“Get Anakin,” he says. “Something’s wrong.”

Rex runs out of the room, leaving him leaning heavily against Gree. Wolffe has noticed them suddenly stopping their match and come over from where he was doing his own training.

“Obi-Wan?” he asks, and Gree nods for Cody this time.

“Shit,” says Wolffe, and picks Cody up.

Cody tries to punch him, but there are dark spots swimming in his eyes and he isn’t sure which Wolffe to aim for.

He’s unceremoniously perched on his brother’s back as Wolffe jogs through the corridors, Gree beside him. As they pass, other members of the 212th fall in behind them. Cody thinks that they’re talking, but he doesn’t know if they’re following because of him or because of Obi-Wan.

 _Whoever’s attacking their General is going to have a very nasty surprise_ , he thinks in a moment of coherent satisfaction.

Anakin and Rex nearly bowl them over as they rush out of a connecting corridor, holding hands as Anakin uses the Force to boost his speed and tow Rex behind him. Cody is surprised when Anakin skids to halt and looks at him with almost as much worry as he directs at Obi-Wan before visibly gathering himself and matching his pace to Wolffe’s.

Rex doesn’t let go of his hand.

There’s some kind of glowing barrier around Obi-Wan’s door when they finally reach his room. Luminara and Plo are standing in front of it, eyes closed and prodding at it with the Force.

Anakin growls, grabs Rex’s saber off his belt in addition to his own, and uses both of them to cut a neat hole through the wall.

Cody nods in approval.

They’re held up for a moment by Plo, who helps Cody down from Wolffe’s back, and then he’s being half-carried, half-dragged through the hole in the wall by Anakin, who impatiently grabs his arm and slings it over his shoulder, his still-ignited saber held out in front of them. Luminara and Gree crowd through right behind them.

They end up in the middle of yet another argument. Dooku – why is he there? How did he get in? – is not-yelling at Qui-Gon, who is definitely yelling back.

Cody glares at the pair and then ignores them to look for Obi-Wan. He finds him curled up in the darkest corner of the room, hands over his ears and knees drawn up tight to his chest.

He reaches Obi-Wan first, scooping him into his lap and holding him tight as Obi-Wan’s hands curl into his shirt and he buries his face in his shoulder. Gree reaches him half a second later, then Wolffe, then Fox, who has come from somewhere, and then the other members of the 212th and the 501st pile into the room and cluster around Cody and Obi-Wan, providing both a physical and a mental barrier between them and the arguing Grey Sith.

Cody wedges himself more comfortably into the corner, leaning against the wall on one side and Gree on the other, and glares daggers at Jinn over Obi-Wan’s head. Fox, from where his back is pressed against Obi-Wan’s, joins him, and within a few seconds all of the vod’e have formed an angry defensive huddle, crowded around their General and glaring furiously at Jinn and Dooku.

If either of them so much as breathe in his direction, the daggers will no longer be metaphorical.

The ones on the outside of the pile already have their blasters out and half-trained on them.

“Stun only,” Fox orders. “We might need Dooku.”

~

Anakin feels a deep satisfaction as he kicks the wall in with the Force and it narrowly misses hitting Dooku. He was just beginning to believe that the asshole old man did genuinely want to join them, and now he goes and does this to Obi-Wan?

Rex grabbed his hand again and he can feel the spike of attraction through their tiny newborn Force-bond, but he files that away to gloat about later and squares up for a fight, lightsaber poised to strike. Rex has his own saber in his other hand.

Anakin could get used to this.

He looks over his shoulder to see Cody protecting Obi-Wan and the rest of the men who followed them flowing into a tightly-packed formation in the corner of the room, centered around the two of them and fairly bristling with the intent to absolutely try their best to murder a ghost if he makes one wrong move towards them.

Plo and Luminara fight their way through the crowd to stand beside him. Their lightsabers are in their hands, drawn but not yet ignited.

Dooku finishes dodging the flying piece of wall as Qui-Gon snickers and then turns. His eyebrows rise and his mouth opens in surprise as he takes in the scene and Anakin feels a vicious little thrill of triumph at finally getting him to be undignified, even if it’s only for half a second.

“What the absolute fuck do you dinii besom think you’re doing?” someone yells. Anakin realizes it was him.

“Ani!” Qui-Gon says happily. “I still can’t believe how big you’ve got—”

Anakin doesn’t really think about it before he drops Rex’s hand and tackles Qui-Gon into the wall, one hand around his throat and the other holding his lightsaber to his chest. He knows his eyes are bleeding yellow and red and he doesn’t care.

“Shut up,” he growls. “You don’t get to do this. You are going to shut up and sit down and face some consequences for your actions!”

Dooku clears his throat. “See, even Skywalker agrees with –”

There’s the sound of a blaster and he crumples to the ground. Fox gives him a sharp little smile when he looks around.

“Stun bolt.”

Anakin nods his thanks as Luminara sighs and waves a hand to prop Dooku against the wall.

~

Cody sighs in relief as Anakin hauls Jinn out of the room by his collar, hissing angrily at him the entire time – he seems to be able to physically touch him, though he doesn’t seem to have realized that it should be impossible yet – and Plo and Luminara each grab an end of Dooku and drag him out after them.

Fox has a very smug look as he watches them manhandle Dooku. Cody doesn’t want to know.

Obi-Wan twitches a little, the first time he’s moved since his reflexive grab for him when he picked him up.

“They’re gone,” Cody reassures him.

“I – I saw – Master Qui-Gon –”

“Yeah,” Cody agrees. “What an idiot.”

Obi-Wan shrinks a little in his arms, attempting to curl up into a defensive ball and holding on to him a little tighter. Cody notes with approval that he’s actually using his new arm, seemingly having forgotten about it. At least that’s one good thing that’s come from this.

They stay there a little while longer, until they’re sure that the arguing Master-Padawan pair aren’t going to come back, and then the vod’e at the edges of their huddle begin to stand up to go back to whatever they were doing before.

Gree and Wolffe stay with him and help him move Obi-Wan out of the half-destroyed room and into Cody’s own.

“I suppose it’s good that Dooku and Jinn are finally getting some therapy done, but did they have to do it now?” Gree huffs as she takes half of Obi-Wan’s weight from Cody and they guide him out through the hole. He technically can walk on his own now, but he’s refusing to open his eyes and is shaking a little, and his broken leg is only just mended enough for him to put weight on it anyways, so they help him.

Cody hopes that he isn’t going into some other kind of Force exhaustion-related shock. That’s the last thing either of them need.

“Bastards,” Wolffe growls from behind him, his arms full of Obi-Wan’s few things.

“I want to look at the files on him from the archives,” Cody says. He thinks he’s rather earned the right to that information, both because of this mess and because of his . . . tentative status as a future son-in-law to the annoying oblivious idiot Force-ghost.

Ergh. Darjetii families are a mess.

“I wonder if we can still get into them remotely when the Temple is tiny,” Gree says. “I”ll ask Nara.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s no trouble.” A scary little grin flits across Gree’s mouth as Cody looks across his darjetii’s head at her. “I’m curious too. _Your cyar’ika’s issues have issues,_ ” she adds in his head. _“He can’t have been born with them.”_

“Don’t remind me,” Cody grumbles back.

They help him get Obi-Wan situated on his bunk and then leave them be. Cody spends a few minutes putting Obi-Wan’s things away and then gingerly edges onto the bunk himself. It’s narrow and they are pressed together, knee to shoulder.

He’s feeling a little worried; Obi-Wan’s eyes are still stubbornly closed, as is his end of their bond. He assumes it’s to keep the worst of the backlash from filtering through to him and appreciates it, but at the same time it worries him a little. He’s tense as he half-sits there, shivering against Cody’s side.

Cody yanks another blanket over him. The holocall with Master Che a few days before everything blew up in their face with the Senate had confirmed what the clone medics and Aayla had suspected: in addition to the injuries sustained when fighting Sidious, Obi-Wan had the worst case of Force exhaustion ever recorded in the medical archives and some serious long-term malnutrition and sleep deprivation.

With a slowly growing anger, Cody wonders just how early Obi-Wan’s weird relationship with actually taking care of himself had started.

Anakin comes in after they’ve been lying there in silence for about half an hour. He drapes himself uncomfortably over the end of the bunk and it groans in protest.

Cody works his toes under Anakin’s shoulder and wiggles them to annoy him into speaking.

“I cannot fucking believe Qui-Gon would do this,” Anakin finally grumbles, right after Obi-Wan’s quick breathing has finally evened out into a fitful sleep and his eyes are only closed instead of held shut. “I mean, yeah, I knew him for like a week when I was nine, but still. He’s a grown man. Surely he noticed that he wasn’t – that Obi-Wan wasn’t exactly – “

Anakin heaves his head up from where it’s been hanging over the end of the bed and fixes Cody with an angry, imploring stare.

He pokes him again.

“I was remembering, on the way here,” Anakin mutters. “When I was first brought to the Temple. Qui-Gon stood in front of the entire council and told them he was going to train me. And they said that he already had a padawan, but he said it wasn’t a problem because Obi-Wan was ready to be knighted anyway. But like.”

He stops again.

“The way he is now, I wonder if he actually told Obi-Wan that before he just up and said it in front of everyone.”

Cody turns his head to look at his cyar’ika. He is painfully brave and deeply powerful. He’s good at being Force-sensitive. He’s empathetic and gentle and only a little bit arrogant. He’s intelligent and kind.

“I don’t understand how anyone could drop him and move on like that.”

“Me neither,” Anakin agrees, letting his head flop back. “I mean, obviously we have different kinds of feelings for him, but. He’s family to me. I mean technically all of us are family, but some are closer than others.”

“You see him as a buir?”

Anakin grimaces. “I don’t know. Sometimes, but not really. More of . . . we’re vod.”

Cody nods.

Rex comes in, Padmé behind him. They look doubtfully at the very crowded bunk and then Rex leaves.

Anakin gets up and takes Padma from Padmé, clearly trying to distract himself by cooing at her.

Padmé holds the door open for Rex when he comes back a few minutes later with someone’s mattress that he’s stolen. Together him and Anakin build a cozy pile of mattresses and pillows on the floor and throw blankets over them for good measure.

They end up all squished together, Obi-Wan half-awake in the middle of them all, equally in Padmé and Cody’s laps. Anakin is draped across him with his head on his legs, careful of the cast. Rex has Padma on his chest as she flails and coos at them all and his head is right next to Obi-Wan’s hip, his legs across Anakin’s chest.

Padmé reaches over and tickles Anakin’s nose just to make him laugh. Then she pulls out a datapad and gets to work. Cody can just see what she is doing. It looks like some kind of correspondence.

He has some paperwork of his own to do, but it can wait. Obi-Wan’s breathing is soft in his ear where his head rests on his shoulder and Rex is pinning his legs to the floor. Anakin has produced some tangle of wires and bolts and gears from somewhere and is holding it up with the Force, turning it over and prodding at it with a tiny screwdriver as it hovers just above him.

“What did Jinn say to him?” Cody asks quietly.

Anakin scowls. “Not much, from what I gathered before I had to leave before I really lost my temper. He went in to talk to Obi-Wan, Dooku tried to keep him out, and then they just got in another fight and forgot Obi-Wan was even there. He swears that the only things he said to him were about how happy he was to see him again and how proud he is of him, but who knows what he thought he said and what he actually said.”

“And then who knows how Obi-Wan interpreted what he said,” Padmé adds. “He has a – unique way of always getting the worst interpretation out of anything nice you say to him.”

“Don’t I know it,” Cody grumbles.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after much thought on 'what if i could make a series inside a series?' i remembered that chapters exist

Shmi hears an explanation of why Plo suddenly ran out of the room mid-sentence when he comes back. She listens with a frown.

Then she smiles at Plo, presses a packet of the tea-like drink he likes into his hands, and goes to see if she can sort out this mess.

She finds both Dooku and Jinn sulking in one of the rec rooms, still sporadically arguing.

The slam she manages to get out of the door startles them both into silence.

“Count, if you cannot control yourself in the presence of your ad, I suggest you take some time to cool down and consider your actions,” she says, eyeing him icily. He had been gentle with the injured, which had made him a good man in her eyes, but as soon as Master Jinn had re-entered their lives he had lost most of his composure.

Dooku looks startled, but when she jerks her head at the door, he stiffly walks past her.

She thinks he hears him mutter “Good luck,” as he passes.

Shmi puts her hands on her hips and squares up to the floating, transparent form of Qui-Gon Jinn. “Master Jinn,” she says, letting a sharp smile cross her face. “I think we need to talk.”

~

Plo is drinking his tea when the door opens. It’s not Shmi, it’s Wolffe and Echo and Waxer who sidle in and settle down on the floor around his chair.

It pains him when he sees them do that, like they think they don’t deserve the same as he has. He knows that logically it’s just part of their culture; there isn’t much time for comfort on a battlefield or crammed into barracks. It still grieves him that they prefer not to use furniture.

He reaches down with his free hand and cups Echo’s cheek. He can feel his nervousness.

“What is on your minds?” he asks between sips.

“We thought things were better now,” Echo says quietly. “We thought you were all working together.”

“All of us?”

“Ner’dar’jetii,” Waxer says.

Plo’s tusks twitch in confusion, clinking against his cup. “We are.”

All three of his ad shake their heads in unison. “Master Jinn,” Wolffe says.

Ah. Plo relaxes a little. This, he understands.

“Qui-Gon has always been a tumultuous person,” he tries to explain. “I think that being dead has not improved that much, and may have complicated it further. He has had time to think and process his life. We have not had that luxury.”

“But why is everyone so upset by him?”

“For one thing, he was a good friend to several of us and it was very upsetting when he died.”

The vod’e nod. They understand that intimately.

“Also, he died quite unexpectedly and at the hands of a Sith. Before then, the Sith had not been heard of for a thousand years.”

Waxer snorts. “And now you’re all dar’jetii.”

Plo pats his head, the only part of him he can reach. Waxer leans into his touch.

That’s a peculiar thing he’s noticed – all the clones absolutely love it when someone they trust plays with their hair. He wonders for a moment if it’s a quirk they inherited from Fett.

“Yes,” he agrees placidly. “Sometimes I wonder if we had not turned into a newer version of Sith. Obsessed with purity and lightness, unable to empathize any longer with the suffering that the people we were supposed to be protecting were enduring. We held our traditions to be more important than lives.”

He hesitates for a moment, feeling suddenly ashamed.

Echo moves to rest his chin on his knee and Plo smiles at him. Wolffe stands up entirely and moves around to drape his arms over his shoulders, face tucked against the back of Plo’s neck. Waxer is already hugging his other leg.

The vod’e are so tactile, and he soaks it in gratefully after so many years of cold detachment. And he was always in the creche, any chance he got, interacting with the younglings. He can’t even begin to imagine how some of the others feel who were too busy for even that level of basic touch.

Though the way Mace and Luminara and Obi-Wan practically go comatose when they are touched by their men gives him an idea.

“But part of that was Sidious,” Echo says. “He was hurting all of you and hiding from it.”

“Kriffing coward,” Wolffe grumbles.

“Yes,” Plo agrees. “But we are not blameless for our failings. Qui-Gon fighting a Sith was just the final confirmation of the . . . imbalance we had been dimly sensing in the Force. And after he died, things moved so quickly that before we knew it, we were leading the war.” He hesitates. “He also dumped Anakin in our laps and then, well, abandoned us to figure him out. There is still some resentment about that.”

“General Skywalker is powerful,” Echo says crossly. “He’s saved the Republic more times than I can count.”

“Yes, but when he came to us, he was confused, scared, still thinking of himself as a slave, and far older than most younglings are when we find them. We used to take in anyone, regardless of age, but Anakin was the first older than about three for decades. We had forgotten how to teach him, how much of the subtle things he didn’t know through no fault of his own.”

The door slides open and Shmi enters, followed by Qui-Gon. He looks uncharacteristically sheepish; head down and hands folded together.

Shmi sits down beside Plo and Wolffe moves to drape an arm over her shoulders as well as Plo’s. She reaches up and pats his hand.

Qui-Gon glides around the room, fiddling with things.

“I can’t believe this happened,” he says at last. “I knew he could be – impatient, angry. But I never really believed he would go _dark_ , if you know what I mean.”

Shmi growls, actually growls, and it startles him into wide-eyed silence.

Plo sighs. “Qui-Gon,” he says evenly. “All of us are Sith now. Every last one of us, from Mace to the youngest initiate able to understand what they are choosing. The way we were interpreting the Code was slowly strangling us. It is not a failure that we have fallen into. It is a future.”

“But you don’t feel –”

“Sick? Evil? No. Sith does not equal bad, just as Jedi does not equal good. That was one of the hardest lessons we had to learn in this war.”

“I –” Qui-Gon finally comes to rest leaning against a wall. “This will be difficult for me,” he admits. “Of all the ways I could see this war ending, this was not one of them.”

“Oh, the war’s not over,” Waxer says. “Just on hold for a little while.”

Qui-Gon glances at him and then away again, as if he doesn’t know what to make of him.

“And on that note, you need to stay away from General Kenobi,” Wolffe says. “You’re hurting him and if you keep doing that Cody will find some way to kill you again.”  
“I’m sure I could handle one –”

“No, you really couldn’t,” Plo says flatly. “Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan has the worst case of Force exhaustion ever recorded in the archives. His mindscape was extensively damaged by literal years of attack by Sidious. He can barely make any kind of mental touch right now except with Cody. He’s been isolated for years and has practically worked himself to death fighting in this war. He needs time to heal and center himself before you can go dreging up old traumas.”

“I never meant to hurt him –”

“You don’t think that being reminded that you were killed in front of him would be traumatic?” Shmi snaps.

Qui-Gon has the grace to look sheepish.

“And stop fighting with Dooku constantly. You’re making us all very tense and it’s not helping matters at all,” Plo says sternly, in the same voice he uses to tell shinies to put the grenades down right now.

“If you want to stay with us, you need to at least try to be polite,” Shmi says, jaw set. She looks remarkably like Anakin in a temper. “You do not have any right to demand that we change our ways to suit you, who does not have to live in our world and deal with our problems. You’re a ghost. You can go anywhere and do anything and have no consequences. And we have to deal with the pain you cause.”

“I’m sorry, all right!” Qui-Gon snaps. “I didn’t intend to hurt anyone.” He sighs, sagging against the wall. “I just wanted to see Obi-Wan and Ani and all of them again.”

“And you can,” Plo says, a little softer. “Just stop trying to make things go the way you want them, hmm?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had this idea in the shower and wrote it up in like ten minutes and uhhhh it flowed the most smoothly of anything i've written for literal weeks
> 
> aren't fox and sabe perfect for each other?

Sabé hums quietly as she walks to her quarters. When the door slides open, she slips inside to see her husband sitting at the table, surrounded by holopads, and their son on the couch, playing a game.

She takes a moment to just appreciate that they are all alive and safe as she toes off her shoes and wanders over to smile down at her husband. They’ve been married nearly as long as Padmé and Anakin have, but unlike them, they’ve successfully kept it secret from literally everyone they know.

Their marriage isn’t legal, sadly; clones still have no rights on either Naboo or Coruscant. But they signed the papers they would have filed if they could have, and each kept a copy. Instead of the traditional jewelry and clothes they would have exchanged, they each got a tattoo symbolizing the other.

She rather likes that switch. Tattoos are an integral part of the vod’e way of life, and she is proud that he loves and trusts her deeply enough to let her in so intimately.

Fox kisses the back of her hand as she moves past him to warm up some food for herself, and she can’t hold back her smile.

They both had had dangerous jobs, but she finds how easily he took to navigating politics and politicians and the unseen dangers of the Senate so deeply attractive, even now. And the facts that he was handsome and could kill a droid from two hundred paces with a hand blaster and would regularly cry over abandoned tooka kits the Coruscant Guard patrols found in alleys only added to it.

Their son watches her as she moves around with sullen, wary eyes before sliding off the couch and coming to hover just behind and beside her while she watches her meal cook.

It doesn’t alarm her.

Eventually he huffs slightly and moves just a little closer, butting his head against her ribcage. He’s growing so fast. Sabé wraps an arm around him and just holds him loosely as they breathe together.

“I figured out that math problem,” he mutters.

“Good job, Boba,” she says.

Their son might be a little traumatized, a little broken, a little prickly, carrying grudges like most people hoarded jewels and still afraid of sudden movements. Yet she knows that Fox did the right thing in breaking him out of the Coruscant jail just a few weeks after he was sentenced there for trying to kill Master Windu to avenge his father’s death, and she loves him as if he were her own.

Boba smiles at her, and Sabé has never felt so hopeful or content.

They are together now, living together as a real family for the first time, and they no longer have to wear their masks.

And maybe they can get Windu to actually apologize to Boba for orphaning him now that he’s gotten his head on straight.

Fox meets her eyes over Boba’s head and she swears that he’s a mind-reader sometimes because he nods.

“I have asked to talk privately to General Windu tomorrow morning,” he says.

Boba stiffens, a quiet noise of anger and discontent escaping from his throat. He twists a hand into her tunic.

“He is going to apologize to you,” she assures him, running a hand through his dark curls. “You should not have tried to kill him in a way that endangered innocent bystanders, but he is the one who began the feud. You can be angry and sad and scared at him. It’s ok. You’re allowed to feel.”

“I want –” he says, and chokes.

“I know,” Fox says. “I miss him too.”

“But now I know that Sidious was behind it, so did Windu really kill –”

Sabé sighs. “He was the hand that swung the blade, yes, but Sidious may have been the one who directed it.”

The tangle of correspondence that Fox had found in the Chancellor’s comm logs had strongly indicated that he had wanted Jango Fett dead, and was not above using the Jedi to get the job done. And now that they knew that he had been planting compulsions and ideas into their minds for years, it was entirely possible that Windu had not killed Fett of his own volition.

That didn’t mean that Boba wasn’t still grieving, though, for the end result was the same; his father dead, him taken away from his brothers, and left to fend for himself in the middle of civil war.

He had a safe home now, with them, and they loved him dearly, but they would never replace his buir and they had no intention of trying to.

“We’ll sort it out tomorrow,” Sabé says firmly but kindly as the cooker beeps. “And no matter what happens, we will be with you. Even if we have to leave the rest of the vod’e and the darjetii behind, we will still be your family, Boba.”


	4. Chapter 4

His hair is wrong.

It’s too long, too heavy. It keeps catching on things and it’s going to drive him insane. Why had Master Qui-Gon let it go wild like this while he was apparently unable to take care of himself.

What is wrong with him, anyway?

Nothing hurts, exactly, not like a new injury, but there are lingering aches and weaknesses almost everywhere all through his body. What happened?

It feels like he’s been through a war.

“No, no,” says the man that hasn’t left his side since he woke up, gently catching his tugging fingers in his own hands and holding them together between his palms, rubbing circles on the base of his thumbs. It feels amazing. After a few moments he curls just one hand around his and combs the other through his too-long-too-fluffy-too-irritating hair and sighs. “At least you didn’t draw blood this time,” he murmurs, his voice soft and smooth and low. It reminds him of a pelt he touched once, long ago. His entire hand had sunk into the fur and he had wanted to rub it all over his face, it was so amazing.

Whoever this man is, he can keep talking as much as he wants.

“If you keep tearing up your hair like this, Aayla and Kix are going to tie your hands down,” he says, but there is no threat in the tone, only worry. “Why do you keep doing it? What’s wrong? You’re not injured there.”

Obi-Wan just blinks at him. It’s one of those days where every word sticks. That’s the only way he can describe it. His brain is churning out words so fast that he only can catch half of them, leaving the rest to spill from his thoughts like fish leaping from a full basket, but his throat feels paralyzed and even if it meant his life, he can not speak.

It literally feels like the words are rushing down and getting stuck, leaving him making barely audible short breaths in the back of his mouth instead of words and sending his eyes darting around as he tries to express what he’s feeling with them instead.

 _Where is Master Qui-Gon_ , he wants to ask. _Who are you?_

He doesn’t want to ask why Qui-Gon isn’t there instead of this stranger. He knows. Qui-Gon cares, he just has a hard time sitting still and being useless. He’ll be waiting for him when he can train again.

The man keeps running his fingers through his hair, applying just enough pressure and scratching just hard enough in all the places that feel the most like his skin is trying to crawl off his body. Obi-Wan hums and leans into his hand. The man smiles.

Obi-Wan studies his face. His skin is dark, and his general appearance – strong cheekbones and brow, wide nose and mouth – remind him of something, but he can’t remember what it is. For a moment he wonders if this man is related to Satine, but he looks nothing like her and at the same time he reminds him so very strongly of her.

The man tilts his head and looks curious, and Obi-Wan realizes that he’s staring, but in flicking his eyes over the man’s face he’s noticed the gold-brightness streaking through his brown irises. It reminds him of tiger’s-eye.

“Do you want something?”

Obi-Wan blinks. _You to never leave,_ he thinks, and vaguely wonders why he being so trusting of this person.

The room he is in is small. The walls are white. He can feel the vibration of hyperspace engines. There is a blaster lying on the only table in the room, beside his lightsaber and a truly horrendously sized stack of datapads. There is a pile of armor neatly stacked on the chair there. It’s white and gold. The door is closed.

For a moment he wonders if he’s been abducted (again), but the fingers curling through his hair say otherwise. Nobody’s ever been this nice to him when he’s been captured, and if they keep being this nice, he just might want to stay.

He’s getting sleepy again, even though he just woke up.

The man shakes him, but it’s gentle. “You need to eat before you go back to sleep.”

Obi-Wan isn’t hungry. He makes a face.

“I know, I know. Kix’s orders, though.”

He reluctantly tries to push himself more upright so he can eat without choking, but his arms are shaking and his chest hurts when he puts pressure on it. So do his hips and he digs his nails into his palms to keep from wincing.

 _What happened to me?_ he tries to ask, but the words stick.

“If you don’t eat, your body can’t rebuild itself,” the man says handing him a bottle of water and something in a wrapper which turns out to be a very boring ration bar. He sighs, his gaze traveling over him.

Maybe he is a little too thin, but Obi-Wan can’t really bring himself to care. Other people need to eat more than he does. He can just use the Force.

The man moves to sit on the bed beside him and Obi-Wan happily leans heavily into his warmth, nearly falling over into his lap in his eagerness. He flinches back, but the man only laughs quietly and helps him sit up with an arm wrapped around his shoulders.

It’s only then that he noticed that one of his hands has been replaced by a prosthetic.

Both his eyes and his thoughts skitter away from dealing with that at the moment.

His hair is catching on the wall behind him and the man’s clothes and it’s going to drive him insane. It feels oily and itchy and –

Obi-Wan bites back a scream of frustration as once again his clawing fingers are pried loose from his head.

“That’s really bothering you,” the man says, concerned. “What is it? Do you have a headache?”

Obi-Wan wriggles a hand loose and yanks on a strand, tugging it out to show the man. Can’t he see how greasy it is? And far too long as well. It’s going to catch in everything and he’s going to set it on fire, with his luck, and he’ll probably burn it off with his lightsaber the first time he trains again after this anyway and he’d rather not go through that.

“It’s your hair that bothering you?”

He could cry with happiness as the man’s fingers once again run across his scalp.

“I suppose it is a little dirty,” he says, sounds baffled. “Do you want to wash it?”

He holds out the strand again and makes a violent cutting motion with his other hand.

“You want to _cut_ it?”

 _Get it off get it off,_ he wants to say, but he can’t, so he settles for nodding frantically.

“All right,” he says dubiously. “Kix is going to come check up on you in about an hour, I can get him to fix it then.”

He can live with that.

Obi-Wan settles back and does his best to ignore the constant sensory input. This close, he can finally see that the curling line that starts over the man’s eye and goes all the way down his jaw is a scar, not a really cool tattoo like he had thought at first.

“Am I that interesting to look at?” the man says, catching him staring again, and smiles.

He nods, and at the end of it, his head drifts downward even more. He’s finished most of the ration bar and his eyes are heavy again.

“Yeah,” he hears as he unceremoniously drops his head on the man’s shoulder. “That’s me, a living pillow.” A hand ruffles his hair, so he knows that he isn’t in trouble. “Kriff, if I’d known that all it took to get you to sleep was some hair petting and my collarbones at the beginning of this war, we’d have had a lot less stress in our lives.”

Obi-Wan moves his head up slightly. The man has a good point. The space between his neck and shoulder is like it was made for him.

Wherever he is, he is safe.


	5. Chapter 5

Mace is not having the best of days.

He had started off the morning with a frankly surreal interview with Fox, who had then been joined by Sabé, who had then been joined by Boba.

Somehow, in the middle of the chaos that had been Fox and Sabé’s lives on Coruscant, they had found the time to meet, become friends, get married, and break one of the Republic’s most highly secured prisoners out of the highest security facility they had and then adopt him. Without anyone ever knowing.

He’d never wanted Boba to be there in the first place. The unnecessarily cruel treatment of a grieving, angry child by the Senate and the Chancellor had been one of the last things that broke his grudging trust in them.

He had found himself apologizing to the child for killing his father, and being completely sincere about it. If he had known the vod’e before Geonosis, he would never have reacted as he did. Fett had been just one more possible hostile on a literal killing field, and he had taken him out with lethal force with no hesitation.

Now, with a clear mind, the evidence of Sidious’ dislike for the man, the knowledge that his perceptions had been tampered with, and memory upon memory of the kindness and loyalty that his clones had always shown, Mace truly regrets his part in carrying out Sidious’ plan to have Fett assassinated.

Boba had watched him uneasily throughout the uncomfortable conversation, but he had taken the apology with a stiff nod and stalked out of the room with no attempt at renewing the hostilities.

Fox had run after him, and Sabé had only stayed to express her gratitude at his willingness to talk to them before also hurrying off after her family.

Which means that he’s alone just in time for Aayla to call him down to Cody’s room, where Obi-Wan is since his own quarters were trashed by Anakin cutting through the wall.

He arrives to find Obi-Wan curled up at the very back of the bunk, peering warily at Aayla over his knees which are drawn up tight to his chest. One arm is curled around them and the other has a death grip on Cody’s sleeve.

There is a little pile of cut-off hair in one corner of the room, and Obi-Wan is now sporting a somewhat inexpert version of the haircut he always had kept as a padawan.

Aayla looks defeated.

“What’s wrong?” Mace says, because something is clearly bonkers and he has no patience for tiptoeing around it. It’s a familiar kind of bonkers, though, but he can’t quite place why.

Obi-Wan’s eyes focus on him and he straightens up a little, staring at him. He makes an aborted sound and then winces.

“He doesn’t recognize me,” Aayla says. “He seems to be unable to speak and –” She flaps a hand at him. “His shields are suddenly back and the only thing I can get from him is ‘Where is Qui-Gon?’”

Mace sighs and leans against the wall. He knows why this scene is familiar now. “We need Master Che,” he says. “I have no idea how to treat trauma-induced memory loss. Especially when it’s mixed up with all the other problems.”

Aayla looks confused, but Cody looks like he has just been handed the last piece of a puzzle.

“He recognizes me, though,” he says. “Aayla tried to trim his hair for him and as soon as he realized that she was holding a blade, he panicked, but he let me do it with no hesitation.”

“Do you know who I am?” Mace asks. He gets a nod. “Do you know who she is?” He points to Aayla.

Obi-Wan’s eyes flick to her, he seems confused, and then gives an uncertain shake of his head.

“Do you know who he is?”

Obi-Wan’s negative is much more certain, but then he narrows his eyes at Mace and uncurls to wrap both of his arms around Cody’s and rest his chin on his shoulder. Then he rests his open hand over his heart.

 _Mine,_ he is clearly telling them.

Mace feels a grin sneak onto his face. “Never change, Obi-Wan,” he says, and turns to Aayla. “It’s not your fault. This has happened a few times when – before. Not for a long time, though, the last was after – hmm. After Naboo.”

He is keenly aware of sharp eyes tracking every word. Obi-Wan might be temporarily nonverbal, but that doesn’t meant that he isn’t paying attention.

“Let’s leave them in peace,” he suggests to Aayla.

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Cody half-shouts after them.

Mace looks back to see him being absorbed further into Obi-Wan’s nest he is building on the bunk and lets himself grin wider. “Carry on, Commander,” he says, and closes the door.

Once they are far enough away that there is no possible way Obi-Wan can overhear them, the smile fades from his face and he runs a tired hand over his head. It isn’t even afternoon yet. “I’ll help you find his medical files from when he was a padawan,” he tells Aayla, who is still looking upset. “From the way he’s acting, I’d say that he’s back when he was in his late teens. Prickly as hell, horrifically prone to eavesdropping, and with attachment issues the size of a planet.”

“Like Anakin, then,” Aayla says, and he remembers abruptly that she shared her padawan years rather closely with him.

“Worse,” he tells her. “I’m just grateful that on some level he clearly remembers and trusts his Commander, or else one of us would have to sit with him just to keep him from getting into the databases and realizing what’s happened.”

She scowls. “What do I do about his not talking? I need him to tell me how he’s feeling, especially about his new arm.”

“He’ll tell you, it just won’t be in words. Did you ever work with some of the nonverbal initiates during your shifts on creche duty?”

She nods. “Not often, but sometimes. Oh. I understand.”

“I used to be able to interpret him fairly well, so you can call me if you need to. Or Quinlan, obviously. Luminara might be able to read him too.”

“And Cody,” she adds.

“Yes,” he agrees. “He’s become astonishingly fluent in Obi-Wan in a short time.” He glances sideways at her. “Like Bly has with you.”

Aayla rolls her eyes. As they separate, Mace to go find the old medical records, Aayla to go tell the clone medics what has happened, he hears her snort at him.

Everything is different now, and yet everything has stayed the same.

**Author's Note:**

> this . . . did not want to be written. at all. no idea why. anyways, here's what my brain has finally wrestled into being captured.


End file.
